Pizzeria 22 (West Seattle)

At one point home to the only wood fired pizza oven in West Seattle, Pizzeria 22 is named after Pizzeria Ventidue in Naples and Neil Young has even been here. This restaurant serves up what you would expect for an authentic Neapolitan-style pizza place and was a great base for catching up with some friends in West Seattle often left out of Friday pizza nights across the sea.

With a larger than usual group size of 7, everyone ordered a different pizza so that our sample size was a little bigger. But for some reason, our special guests were all feeling quite opinionated on this West Seattle night. The coalition thought that this was a pretty good pizza, while the others were very harsh to judge. It might have been the phase of the moon or hormones, but it might also be that Kerri and I have been eating a lot of Neapolitan pizza lately and what makes a good neapolitan is little easier to pin down.

Kerri wasn’t feeling super well on the pizza outing evening so wasn’t as passionate as usual for her normal reviewing. But overall, she still found her Margherita DOC ($18) to be pretty good for a traditional Neapolitan. She liked the cheese but felt there might be a smidge too much parmesan cheese that might have overpowered the buffalo mozzarella. The pizza also had cooled down significantly as we had a larger group, and it probably would have been better if she had received it piping hot. That being said, all the elements were quite tasty and she would come back.

For me, the crudo ($17) was a really good with a light crust and almost pancakey middle. This made it a little hard to cut as it wasn’t as thick, but I don’t think it had as much of a soggy issue as other places we’ve been. The sauce here got thumbs up from me, and I also wonder if the pizzas here are a little bigger than at other Neapolitan spots. The prosciutto was plentiful and cheese was also nice. I tasted the Margherita DOC which I found to be a little too cheesy for me, glad I was glad to have ordered the crudo. Mine came piping hot which might have come at the sacrifice of a few of the other cooler pizzas that landed at the table.

We were happy but then our guests got a little opinionated about sogginess. We’re learning enough now to know that pizza sog comes from a delicate combination of scientific reasons like moisture content from toppings, and sometimes just can’t be helped.

First time SPC guest Alden thought his pizza had an undercooked middle and couldn’t stand up to its own toppings. “6/7 out of 10,” he claimed. “It was not ‘rowdy ass pizza’.” In the pizza’s defense, he did have a lot of toppings and suggested it needed to go in the oven for a minute longer. We would have liked to see what it would have looked like after another 60 seconds in a 900 degree oven.

Sean and Shaun (who are two different people) were a little more diplomatic. “I share the opinion that it was a little soggy in the middle despite the crust being blackened,” Sean said. He agreed that the toppings were a little sparse but enjoyed them overall. Shaun shared his opinion about some sogginess and sparser toppings. “But I would definitely order it again,” she said. “I liked the toppings to sauce to cheese ratio.”

Commonwealth representatives Charlotte and Adrian gave their shared chicken pesto carlito ($17) and tonno ($15) high remarks. “The crust was really light, but the toppings were sparse. It seemed really authentic,” Charlotte said. “I liked both my pizzas. Probably one of my favorite pizzas in Seattle so far. That’s partly because I steered outside of the staples,” Adrian confirmed.

We rated Pizzeria 22 pizza highly and among some of our other Seattle Neapolitan favorites at a complicated 4.125/5. Not to worry, Alden will come along with us to Proletariat at a later date so that he can properly explain how a pizza becomes “rowdy ass.”